We moved from California to Idaho but moved back after 4 years

• Jodi Wright, 56, moved from California to Idaho in 2020 in search of a quiet place to retire.
• Wright and her family built a custom home outside of Boise.
• But they moved back to California earlier this year because of rising prices.

This essay is based on a conversation with Jodi Wright, a 56-year-old stay-at-home mother whose family moved from Sacramento, California, to Caldwell, Idaho, a small town about 30 minutes west of Boisein 2020.

Idaho’s housing market has exploded in the past four years, with the state’s median home price from $360,700 in September 2020 to $481,100 in September 2024, for Redfin. Meanwhile, median home prices in Boise rose from $389,500 in September 2020 to $525,000 in September 2024, for Redfin.

The following has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I was born in Washington state. When I graduated high school, I wanted a change of scenery, so I packed up the car and moved to California.

I met my husband here, and he is a police officer. We were blessed with triplets, but one of our boys died soon after birth. It was terrifying, but it definitely clarified life.

We have always been outsiders. Our vacations are usually based around the beach or Disney. You can do it year-round here in California, which we love.

But the cost of living is so high, and our political affiliation is Republican. This became a problem when COVID-19 hit and they closed schools. Our kids were in second grade and struggling.

We had already purchased land in Idaho in 2018. We planned to move once my husband retired, but the pandemic accelerated our plans.

We moved to Idaho in December 2020

We listed our home in California, which sold in one day for $699,000. Zillow estimated it is now worth over $900,000.

My husband was not old enough to retire, so he stayed in California to continue working. We thought it would be enough for just a few years until my husband could join us full time.

We were a little nervous about how this would work, but he would travel back and forth to Idaho two or three times a month and we would FaceTime.

We started building our Idaho home in Caldwell, a town that is part of the Treasure Valley on the outskirts of the Boise area. It was still affordable at the time. If we moved there now, we couldn’t afford the house we built, which cost us about $750,000.

It would probably cost twice as much to build it now.

It was a large house, almost 4,000 square feet, with four bedrooms and five bathrooms. We had a fabulous view of the river and mountains on 2 ½ acres in a small subdivision in the country.

We wanted to live in the country, have a little more space between our neighbors and feel less of the hustle and bustle we were used to here in California. Our favorite part of Idaho was how quiet it was where we lived.

One of the main differences we noticed between California and Idaho was how clean Idaho was. You don’t see a bunch of graffiti or trash everywhere.

But we only stayed in Idaho for 4 years

We definitely thought our money would go further in Idaho. Some things are cheaper, like electricity and gas, so we thought the overall cost of living would also be lower.

But it looked like prices really started to rise in 2021. Part of that was because life in general became more expensive with inflation. But many things in Idaho felt comparable to California.

When we first got to Idaho, my husband flew back and forth to California for less than $150. But over time, round-trips went up to $300 or more.

Our auto and homeowners insurance were originally cheaper than in California, but both have nearly doubled in the last two years we’ve lived there.

The weather in Idaho was not conducive to our lifestyle either. You can’t know a country until you live here. The wind is very strong for six or seven months of the year, and the state receives a lot of fire smoke from California and Oregon. We barely went outside the first two summers we were there because the air quality was so bad. The wind just made it that much worse.

Towards the end of 2022, we started to think that maybe Idaho wasn’t the place for us.

We talked a lot about moving elsewhere. But the more we talked, the more we realized that California is home. Regardless of politics and cost of living, it’s home.

We returned to California in June

I’m glad we went to Idaho. We have no regrets at all. My children received an excellent education there. We did our best and enjoyed it.

It took us a year to sell our house in Idaho because the housing market was flooded at the high end. We still managed to make a few hundred thousand dollars.

Now that we’re back in California, we’re also paying less for car insurance than in Idaho.

We recently bought a house in Dixon, California, for $760,000 and plan to move into it in the next few months.

We’re going to carve out our own little piece of happiness here in California.